


Bright Eyes, Big City

by thesecretdetectivecollection



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 13:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8716564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretdetectivecollection/pseuds/thesecretdetectivecollection
Summary: “We should go to America,” Gary says sleepily. “Why?”“It’ll be nice. Nobody’ll know us there. We can walk the streets and people won’t know who we are.”Jamie is quiet, long enough that Gary thinks he must have fallen asleep.“I could hold your hand,” he says quietly.





	

“We should go to America,” Gary says sleepily. 

“Why?”

“It’ll be nice. Nobody’ll know us there. We can walk the streets and people won’t know who we are, what we’ve done.”

Jamie is quiet, long enough that Gary thinks he must have fallen asleep.

“I could hold your hand,” he says quietly. 

—

The coffee shop is surprisingly empty. The weather is nice for this late in the year, and people do come in, yes, but they just want their icy, sugary-sweet drinks, and then they rush back out into the warm autumn air.

She’s been working all day, the barista behind the counter. She’s in her mid-twenties. She should have been past this part of her life, but writing isn’t paying the bills yet, and so she’s here, serving up double-shot mocha espressos to the bleary-eyed graduate student in the corner.

She stares out the window. She’s been doing that a lot today. A pair of men pass by. One of them is wearing a Yankees cap, the other a Mets cap.  The Yank is taller, his hair’s a little grayer round the temples. He’s wearing a crisp blue shirt tucked neatly into his khakis. Late thirties, if she had to guess. He’s wearing sunglasses.

The Met is a little shorter. He’s squinting, even though his sunglasses are tucked into the neck of his shirt, white, also tucked into navy blue pants. They’re talking to each other, in the middle of an animated discussion, apparently. But something about it seems wrong. She doesn’t know what until she realizes that each of them is gesturing, but with only one hand. The others are steady in the space between them, fingers intertwined.

The Met pulls the Yank behind him into the coffee shop. The Yank is slow to remove his sunglasses, but he sticks them so they hang on the first button of his shirt, just like his companion.

The Met–he has a furrow between his brow, she notices now, as he squints up at the menu.

“I want a macchiato,” he announces to his companion. He has a British accent, but it’s not one of those ones from Downton or Harry Potter, or even the chimney sweep from Mary Poppins. “Phil loves macchiatos.”

“What kind of macchiato would that be, sir?”

He takes another moment to decide. The Yank is watching him decide, a fond little smile flitting about his mouth. He was cute, the Yank, she thought, in a this-will-be-a-terrible-mistake-but-it’ll-be-a-fun-one-at-least sort of way. Apparently, he was also very, very taken.

“Caramel, please.” 

“You’ll get fat,” teases the Yank under his breath, laughing brightly at the elbow that’s launched at his ribs.

“Anything else?” she asks, looking at the Yank expectantly.

“Just a regular coffee, two creams, one sugar, please.” The Yank has a different accent, it pulls and stretches the vowels a little differently than his more-than-a-friend.

“What are your names?” she asks, picking up a black marker and holding the cardboard cup expectantly. She doesn’t like this part of her job. The customers don’t like this part, either. It’s weird, too intimate for this kind of exchange. But it’s company policy, and so she grits her teeth and asks the question. 

Still, she doesn’t usually see her customers exchange panicked glances. The Yank squeezes the Met’s hand and takes a little step forward.

“I’m Stevie,” he says, and the name rolls off his tongue easily enough, “and this is… Neville.” The Met–Neville? starts saying something, and it sounds a bit peeved, but the Yank, er, Stevie, that is, squeezes his fingers one more time, and he huffs and falls silent. 

She prepares the drinks and watches them settle into a corner booth–it’s never open, but in this weather, they’ve gotten lucky, it seems. She watches their conversation, voices hushed. She looks away when the Yank presses his lips to the Met’s cheek, feeling like she’s intruding on something private.

The Met interlocks his fingers with the Yank’s.

“I told you this would be a good idea,” he murmurs.

“I hope we don’t see Lamps while we’re here,” the Yank says.

The Met looks horrified, though she doesn’t know what caused his fear of lamps–they don't normally evoke that sort of reaction, she thinks. The Yank laughs at the look on his face and pulls him in and kisses him, on the mouth this time. They’re laughing and a little red when they pull apart, like carefree teenagers. They look giddy, and happy, and young, and in love.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr (@thesecretdetectivecollection).  
> For gutilicious, who suggested that this be expanded beyond a five line snippet I scrawled in the margins of my chemistry notebook.


End file.
